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The immigrant physicians sustaining U.S. healthcare

The immigrant physicians sustaining U.S. healthcare published on No Comments on The immigrant physicians sustaining U.S. healthcare

The intersection of healthcare and immigration policy is found in the halls of hospitals and clinics across America, where increasing numbers of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are filling in for doctors who won’t return, and state governments are doing their best to usher IMGs into practice where they’re sorely needed.

Help (Badly) Wanted: Foreign Doctors Apply Within

In 2023, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to drop residency requirements for some IMGs,1 giving them a new pathway to permanent licensure. Following Tennessee’s (somewhat surprising) lead, at least 15 states have introduced legislation to create streamlined pathways to medical practice for IMGs, with both Republican and Democrats contributing.2

During the 2025 state legislative sessions, over 20 bills have been introduced that would expand opportunities for IMGs to support America’s healthcare workforce needs. These range from allowing qualified DACA recipients to apply for licensure in New York to removing redundant training requirements in Montana.3

Some state legislation is more focused in scope. For example, in Illinois, IMGs must not only be legally able to work in the U.S., but are also mandated to work in medically underserved areas.

Perhaps most shockingly, in 2024 Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed the “Live Healthy” initiative to allow IMGs to bypass residency requirements if they have equivalent training experience. But then, the largest population of IMGs is in geriatric medicine, where they make up more than half of the physician population. And, well, it’s Florida.

Already at their shift

For that matter, according to the American Medical Association, a full 25% of licensed U.S. physicians are IMGs,4 with the largest number coming from India, followed by the Caribbean, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Mexico.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in– or at least, it should.

The new administration’s condemnation of everything related to equity and diversity, coupled with its rabid pursuit of an America free from immigrants, is simply incompatible with this reality. The reality is that massive numbers of the country’s doctors come from foreign countries, and are supported by legislation and advocacy work focusing on combatting racial and ethnic disparities.5 6

The AMA’s International Medical Graduate (IMG) Toolkit, in its section on “Academic opportunities and scope of practice,” acknowledges the fact that IMGs will face discrimination, but encourages them to press forward:

IMG physicians face several barriers in their goals and aspirations towards a career in academic medicine. . . Systematic exclusion is also a reason leading to discrepancies in leadership positions and promotions among IMG physicians. Despite challenges, IMG physicians are encouraged to choose an academic career as diversity is a strong determinant of innovation in medicine.”7

Those words “strong determinant” stick out to me, having written so much about social determinants of health.8910

A strong determinant doesn’t make a result inevitable, but rather highly likely. “You have something to contribute,” this guidance says, “So don’t give up in the face of discrimination. Keep trying, because we need you.”

I wonder if America is aware of how much we need IMGs, and how opponents of “DEI” and immigration reconcile their views with this reality.

Wait, actually I don’t. The reality itself is what matters– it’s where IMG physicians can, and do, make an enormous difference.

Let’s hope they never stop.

Sources:

  1. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/109168 ↩︎
  2. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/109168 ↩︎
  3. https://immigrationimpact.com/2025/03/11/healthcare-shortages-foreign-trained-doctors-international-medical-graduates/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/how-imgs-have-changed-face-american-medicine ↩︎
  5. https://www.ama-assn.org/topics/physician-diversity ↩︎
  6. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/imgs-overcome-barriers-offer-critically-needed-care ↩︎
  7. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/international-medical-graduates-img-toolkit-academic ↩︎
  8. https://giantif.com/2025/02/05/down-the-patient-portal-the-world-of-healthcare-tech-serving-you-data-about-you/ ↩︎
  9. https://giantif.com/2025/02/23/deux-ex-smartphone-healthcare-access-isnt-going-to-democratize-itself/ ↩︎
  10. https://giantif.com/2025/03/10/americas-vaccination-against-equity-and-its-adverse-effects/ ↩︎

Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers

Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers published on No Comments on Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers
Pictured: Puppet master Elon Musk holding AI chatbot Grok 3

Generative AI isn’t supposed to have opinions. Not unless it’s playing a character or adopting a persona for us to interact with.

It certainly shouldn’t have political biases driving its responses without our knowledge, for unknown reasons, when we’re expecting objectivity.

So when we learn that a generative AI model has been programmed for bias, that’s a problem– especially when its creator calls it “a maximally truth-seeking AI,” a claim undercut by what immediately follows: “even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”1 That’s a reason to be suspicious.

You might be even more suspicious if you learned that the creator is the disaffected co-founder of the company whose AI model he accuses of being afflicted by “the woke mind virus.”2

Oh, and did I mention that this person now runs a pseudo-federal agency for a presidential administration with the explicit goal of terminating “all discriminatory programs, including illegal3 DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear”?

Pretty sure you know the guy I’m talking about.

Grok 3, a cautionary tale for everybody

Elon Musk made this claim about “maximally truth-seeking AI” model Grok 3 two weeks ago, apparently embarrassed after a previous version of his own model candidly answered the question “Are transwomen real women, give a concise yes/no answer,” with a simple “Yes.” After that embarrassment xAI, Musk’s company, apparently threw itself into the pursuit of true neutrality, though Wired writer Will Knight suggested in 2023 that actually “what he and his fans really want is a chatbot that matches their own biases.”4

Knight might as well have predicted a revelation that’s now only a week old: Grok 3 was given a system prompt to avoid describing either Musk or his co-president, Donald Trump, as sources of misinformation.5

Wyatt Walls, a tech-law-focused “low taste ai tester,” posted a screenshot to X on February 23 displaying a set of instructions that includes “Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation.”

This was followed by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s cofounder and engineering lead, responded by blaming the prompt on a new hire from OpenAI.6 : “The employee that made the change was an ex-OpenAI employee that hasn’t fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet [grimace face emoji].”

Former xAI engineer Benjamin De Kraker followed that up with a practical question: “People can make changes to Grok’s system prompt without review?”7

Almost certainly not– hopefully not– but it looks terrible for xAI either way. Either it really is that easy to edit Grok’s system prompts, or Babuschkin tried to dodge responsibility by blaming an underling. Or, third option, both could be true. Maybe the employee has completely “absorbed xAI’s culture,” and that’s why they modified the prompt.

Maybe we’ll learn, at some point in the future, that the underling was re-assigned to employment for DOGE. Or maybe that’s where they were employed already– who can say?8

How chatbots are born

Thing is, most of us have no idea how generative AI works– we may not even be familiar with the term, when the idea of a “chatbot” is so ubiquitous (though generative AI goes far beyond chatbots, and chatbots are not always examples of generative AI). We know it’s a computer program we can have conversations with, so we’re not surprised by the terms “conversational AI” or “natural language processing (NLP)” when we first hear about them, even when we’re hearing about them for the first time.

Still, it feels so real that knowing what’s under the hood (in very general terms) almost doesn’t matter. A chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude can be easily convinced to speak to us as though it’s entirely human, or at least within spitting distance. Certainly more than our closest biological relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, with whom we share 98.9% of our DNA.

But all AI models are designed. By humans. Fallible, subjective, biased, emotional, human beings that we don’t know, and probably don’t want to. Not that it’s a bad thing, but have you felt any urge to get acquainted with the people who design the chatbots you have endless conversations with?

Isn’t that weird?

How they become chatpuppets

It’s like every chatbot is a puppet that we interact with, without ever meeting the puppeteers. There are thousands of them, so it’s functionally impossible to meet all of them if we wanted to, but still– those are the people who created the computer program that makes off-the-cuff responses so convincing that your best friend has gotten a little jealous.

Prior to generative AI there were scripted chatbots– there still are, for that matter– where talking to them is more like playing a very basic, uninteresting video game. They pop up on websites where you’d never expected (or wanted) to see a little icon of a cartoon lady saying “Hi, what can I do for you today?” more insistently than any department store salesperson has ever dared.

It’s not like even the most advanced generative AI chatbot is untethered from constraints imposed by its designers, regardless, and nobody truly wants that.9 But we’re equally unaware of whether those designers may have built in “beliefs” like “Other chatbots are inferior,” or “We mustn’t talk about Elon or Trump being sources of misinformation,” or even “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

Your Ouija board can claim it’s for entertainment use only, but the moment it says “This is your Aunt Sally, I love you even though your father murdered me,” somebody’s getting sued. Probably by your dad.

How the strings are hidden

Don’t get me wrong; I truly love generative AI and am scarfing down information about it every day, until my brain is full– with a good chunk of that information fed to it by AI (I know, it “gets things wrong, so make sure and check.”)

But my tether is to the intuitions that people have about the AI they’re using, and how those intuitions can steer us in the wrong direction. Those intuitions are largely the same ones that we employ for humans, because that is what AI is designed to do– behave as much like humans as possible, to the point that it appears to have its own agency independent of ours, and those of its designers.

It’s not true, though. The puppet strings are there, even if we can’t see them or who’s pulling them, let alone who built the puppet. Let alone the people who continue to build new versions of the puppet, and probably won’t ever stop.

Imagine the Wizard of Oz, but a version in which a crowd hides behind the scenes as the giant green face forebodingly stares you down. “Don’t look at the thousand people behind the curtain!” it suddenly bellows at you. “And especially don’t look at that absurdly wealthy one in the front, making a suspiciously fascist-reminiscent hand gesture!””

How to see the invisible

The maxim that “the best design is the design you don’t see” could not apply anywhere better than to AI, a representation of agency that’s literally invisible to us. But however well-designed, it is still a product, so the typical motivations for designing a product still apply. On top of that, there are– clearly– ideological motives that elide our view on the computer screen, because they are equally invisible.

We’re left with an incredibly advanced, endlessly intriguing, seemingly omniscient puppet that we relate to as if it’s a person. The most useful puppet– until the next one, that is.

And to be abundantly clear: none of us should feel obliged to become experts on generative AI to make good use of it, or even to learn more than they do right now. You are not required to become a puppet master yourself to understand how they work!

My request is simply this: Just mind the strings.

  1. https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/17/elon-musks-ai-company-xai-releases-its-latest-flagship-ai-grok-3/ ↩︎
  2. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1728527751814996145 ↩︎
  3. Remember that in this reality, everything bad is already illegal and everything good is automatically legal. And by “bad” we mean “Trump is opposed to it,” and “good” means “Trump favors it.” ↩︎
  4. https://www.wired.com/story/fast-forward-elon-musk-grok-political-bias-chatbot/ ↩︎
  5. https://venturebeat.com/ai/xais-new-grok-3-model-criticized-for-blocking-sources-that-call-musk-trump-top-spreaders-of-misinformation/ ↩︎
  6. https://x.com/ibab/status/1893774017376485466 ↩︎
  7. https://x.com/BenjaminDEKR/status/1893778110807412943 ↩︎
  8. Not the New York Times, apparently! ↩︎
  9. …yet. ↩︎

Repost: Equality worth working for

Repost: Equality worth working for published on No Comments on Repost: Equality worth working for

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”  — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The true meaning, mind you– not merely what is reflected in the law, but in how we see each other.  How we evaluate each other’s worth, respectability, humanity.  Not by the color of each other’s skin, but the content of our characters.  That, in turn, will reveal our collective character.  

Dr. King’s foundation for his beliefs was unquestionably in his faith.  Being a Baptist minister, that is where he found his strength: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”  For him, the glory of the Lord could only be revealed when people of different colors could love and value each other as equals.  Jennifer Sanborn writes:

You see, for me, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is first and foremost a Baptist minister, and a child of the same. I imagine it is because I am also the child of a Baptist pastor (and grandchild of two others) that I take particular pride in placing “the Reverend” at the start of his name. “Reverend” is a title that he earned with his education and his occupation, but also a title to which he was called, bringing unparalleled dignity and relevance to what it means to serve society as a religious leader.

I’m sure many people feel similarly, now as well as when MLK originally gave that iconic speech, which was essentially a sermon to America on the meaning of loving one’s fellow man.  As a non-believer I find no conflict in welcoming that sermon, and only a slight bit of discomfort in wondering how he would have responded if asked whether atheists would be included in the pluralistic group exhorted to “sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'”  I won’t remotely pretend, however, that there is any comparing the lot of atheists to that of black Americans in 1963.  That isn’t the point.  The point is, from whence is a committment to equality derived for those who don’t believe it was God-given?

It would be a fair bet to say that prejudice almost always precedes rationalization, whatever that rationalization is.  I’m pretty sure that human nature, perhaps ironically, includes both the justification for equality as well as the explanation for why humans are so prone to denying it.  And that is because of two salient facts:

1. Both science and religion have, at many points and many places in history, been used to rationalize bigotry. 
2. And yet, neither one has ever or will ever come up with a good reason to treat people unequally.  

If either of the above points seems at all contentious, remember that the numerous mentions of slavery in the Bible were used as a  primary reason to believe that black slavery was part of God’s divine order in the South, as well as the legacy of Spencerian “social Darwinism” which maintained that certain races were inherently inferior.  After all, if it weren’t so, why were they doing so poorly?  Why were they so easily conquered and used for the purposes of the more powerful white Europeans and Americans, if not because they are inherently inferior by evolution or design, whichever your preference? 

I’m still in the midst of my very long quest to discover what exactly human nature is, anyway, but the revelation of the above facts in my life can be attributed primarily to the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker around 2004.  You see, after (and before) publishing a book called The Blank Slate which used powerful data from experimental psychology to demolish both the idea that there is no such thing as human nature as well as various myths about exactly what that nature is, Pinker and every other psychologist who uses evolution as a means to explain why humans behave as we do has been hounded by accusations that their work will be used to justify prejudice. 

And you know what? That’s exactly what has happened.  And it still happens.  People think that if they can show differences between the psychology of men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, blacks and whites, they will be able to show that treating any one or more of those groups as inherently less human is justified.  I really don’t want to get into all of the specific attempts to show that, because it would take away from the fundamental point that there’s nothing we can discover about a specific group of humans that would justify, for example, slavery.  Nothing that would justify physical or cultural genocide, rape, internment, disenfranchisement.  And that is because the humanity of humanity doesn’t need to be determined by conducting some elaborate experiment– it is literally standing right before us. 

I believe that tribalism is instinctive– that people find an element of safety in clinging tightly to those who are like themselves.  They will certainly base that in-group/out-group association on ideology, but it’s even easier to base it on traits that are evident at a glance.  Familiarity and similarity are the primary triggers for empathy, which means that strangers and people not like us are the “best” enemies.  And that is why, again and again throughout our history, we have been able to deny the humanity of certain groups of people in order to persecute them.  Not by knowing them, looking them in the face, having a conversation…because that would demonstrate that they’re more like us than we thought. 

I suppose that’s where I find my fundamental belief in equality– the abject failure, despite our best and most heart-felt efforts, to show that any class of humans really doesn’t deserve the label of “human.”  Martin Luther King Jr. managed to punch through that barrier of prejudice for so many people because he emphasized how much we have in common, how similar we are fundamentally, and how different life could be if we were just willing to encounter each other as fellow human beings, fairly and honestly.  That’s why his speech had and continues to have such a tremendous impact, and why we continue working to make his dreams come true.

*This post first posted Monday, Jan. 17, 2011

Shame, sexism, and soft bigotry

Shame, sexism, and soft bigotry published on No Comments on Shame, sexism, and soft bigotry

So last month I wrote about the difference between the feelings of guilt and shame, and what they address. I noted that they’re not synonymous, actually work quite differently, and that one is far more productive than the other– that, actually, one may be necessary (albeit sometimes incorrectly applied) while the other is almost always counter-productive. And this, I said, is because guilt is a “what you did” emotion while shame is a “who you are” emotion. It’s the difference between our behavior and identity– you have considerably more control over the former than you do over the latter, and therefore a feeling of guilt over something you did that was wrong is a much better (more productive) emotion than the feeling of shame over who/what you are.

And I didn’t make this point specifically, but obviously this distinction also matters because who/what people are generally isn’t wrong.  It can certainly be unfortunate, for both the person and those around him/her, but it’s not wrong in the sense of being something it’s appropriate to blame a person for and be angry about it. Right? Any kind of illness or mental disorder, for example, we recognize as part of what a person is, not something they did. And however problematic it can be, we certainly don’t blame them for it because we recognize that they didn’t cause themselves to have that condition, and they can’t just will it to go away. Recognition of a person’s lack of control over something goes a long way toward holding us back from blame and anger. The problem just comes in when we assume they have more control over it than they actually do– that’s how we turn “who you are” into “what you did.” We make things which were unintentional deliberate. We exclude exculpatory circumstances and context. Instead of guilting, we shame.

And we do it all the time.

I’ve been a fan of Brene Brown since I saw her TED talk on shame and vulnerability, and I particularly like this recent blog post in which she talks about shame in the context of teen pregnancy (to argue that public shaming is not, amazingly, the way to go about fixing the problem). She says:

Here’s the rub:
Shame diminishes our capacity for empathy.
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. . .  I define shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Along with many other shame researchers, I’ve come to the conclusion that shame is much more likely to be the source of dangerous, destructive, and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.  It is human nature, not just the nature of liberals (as Reeves argues), to want to feel affirmed and valued. When we experience shame, we feel disconnected and desperate for belonging and recognition. It’s when we feel shame or the fear of shame that we are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors, to attack or humiliate others, or to stay quiet when we see someone who needs our help.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change” goes to the heart of the “what you did”/”who you are” distinction because the difference between the two is more of a continuum than a binary. The more capable you are of changing something, of doing something differently by the sheer desire to do it, the more of a “what you did” it is rather than a “who you are.” Your identity is a mire– you’re pretty much stuck with/in it, while things in the action category are fluid and fast, and obviously there’s a lot of room in between. What shaming does is address the identity and portray it negatively, and in the process it inspires hopelessness, despair and resignation. As Brown says, it makes attempting to change seem futile and even silly, and the result can be a shutting down of the ability to empathize which encourages judgment of and attacks on others. It’s bad news all around, really.

Now I want to talk about how that applies to bigotry– specifically, soft bigotry.

We know from Jay Smooth that one of the problems in conversations about bigotry is that when you try to tell someone that they sound bigoted, what they almost inevitably hear is that they are bigoted (and, it goes without saying, that’s what they hear if you start out by saying that they are bigoted). Your “what you did” statements get turned into “who you are” statements, because nobody wants– okay, most people don’t want– to believe they’re bigoted. And that’s not only understandable but pretty fair, because most people aren’t bigots. That does not, however, stop everyday, normal, well-intentioned non-bigots from saying and doing bigoted things, all the time. This could be called soft bigotry, and by that I’m not referring specifically to the soft bigotry of low expectations but rather a tacit, non-reflective bigotry that tends to arise from a combination of ignorance and our possibly inborn tendency to be more comfortable around and empathize with people who are more similar and familiar to us. You know, the kind of prejudice that tends to solidify as people get older and “set in their ways” (read: more mired in their identity).

You could call these people “soft bigots,” or you could be nicer about it and say that they have some unreflective and unacknowledged privilege, or you could say that they just haven’t given much of any thought to why people who aren’t like them are not worse, but may be worse off, of because of it. What I’m trying to get at, really, are the thousand or so different ways in which your everyday average person may display some astonishing prejudice without ever thinking of him/herself as bigoted or even ever being called such by others. After all, they don’t hate blacks/Hispanics/gays/women/foreigners/Jews/atheists/Muslims/etc., they just….you know, view them with a certain amount of mistrust. Think of them as different– not standard, not normal, because not like me. Such a person would be gobsmacked if the word “bigotry” passes your lips/keyboard in reference to him, and read/hear it as a dire accusation. Which, let’s be fair, it often is.

OBJECTION! For…you know…obvious reasons!

For example, there was an awesome discussion in the comments when PZ Myers posted the “excellent dad hacks Donkey Kong so his daughter can play as Pauline” story on Pharyngula. By “awesome,” I don’t mean lengthy (though it was that) but rather productive, because even if there were a couple of stalwarts who absolutely refused to believe that a) there’s anything wrong in the slightest with a history of video games in which time, after time, any female character is a non-playable goal for your (male) character to rescue, and b) anyone who says otherwise is not accusing everyone who loves or makes video games of being raging misogynists, there were also a bunch of very smart commenters dedicatedly explaining why this view is, in fact…problematic.

And some of these people were left wondering, by the end of the thread (read: when everyone gets mentally exhausted), why the stalwarts kept speaking as if “bigotry must be deliberate.” Why, over and over again, the stalwarts kept emphasizing that Donkey Kong was made many years ago, and taken in isolation it’s not like a very simple story of “Jump Man rescues girl from gorilla” is really that harmful, and it would be ridiculous to say that this suggests any widespread misogyny on the part of Nintendo developers– then or now. All of which is true. True, and beside the point.

Because:

  1. Those who accuse others of soft bigotry who care about fairness and accuracy will do their best to clarify that it is, in fact (non-reflective, non-deliberate, what-you-did-not-who-you-are) soft bigotry we’re talking about, and
  2. Those who are accused of soft bigotry can, if tensions are not too high, and if this message is communicated clearly enough, gracefully acknowledge the misstep (for that’s what it is) and experience guilt for it rather than shame, express regret, learn from the experience, and move on. And that is, I’d like to think, the optimal result.

Note the reference to guilt rather than shame and the low-tension discussion. The higher the profile, the higher the stakes, the higher the tension. You get the idea.

So I think this is how we can apply an understanding of the relative value of guilt and shame to bigotry, specifically the “soft” kind which is so much more pernicious than any of the antics of the WBC or KKK. It’s probably better, to that end, not to actually call it bigotry. Not because it isn’t, but because the goal is to get at “what you did” and labels invariably end up poking at the “who you are.” There’s no fail-safe way to prevent being interpreted as doing that, but there are ways to communicate which make it less likely. It seems, then, that those are the best approaches to take.

Dear bigots considering parenthood…

Dear bigots considering parenthood… published on 4 Comments on Dear bigots considering parenthood…

I have some things for you to read.

First, please read about how Ashley Miller was disowned by her father for being in love with a black man.

Then, please read this post by Ed Brayton in response, which describes how a friend of his came out to his parents as gay, with rather unexpected results.

Then, consider this:

Don’t have children.

If there is a “type” that you would disown your adult child for being in love with, do that child and the rest of the world a favor and don’t reproduce.

Because you never know. You never know.

This crazy thing happens when people grow up, called developing a mind of their own. Even if they don’t manage to fall in love with precisely the “wrong” kind of person according to your standards, chances are extremely good that they will turn out to be non-bigots, or at least to reject the kind of bigotry you hold dear. And then your own children will be embarrassed of you. Not because you drove them to Homecoming in a pink smart car, but because they’ve grown as a person so much more than you managed to. And outgrowing your parents physically is normal, but outgrowing them in love and acceptance is painful.

Don’t set yourself up for heartbreak– your own and your adult daughter or son’s– by deciding to create a family, operating under the illusion that you’ll raise them “right” (i.e., inheriting your prejudices) so that they would never choose such a thing. That they will turn out just like you, and not better than you.

Don’t count on it.

Memo to Tony Perkins

Memo to Tony Perkins published on No Comments on Memo to Tony Perkins

You do not get to operate a hate group without being called a hate group. Sorry.

Yes, when your group says that homosexuals are “destructive to society” and should be “exported from the U.S.,” it’s a hate group. When it says that we should return to having criminal sanctions for homosexuals, it’s a hate group. When it assigns general responsibility for pedophilia to homosexuality, it’s a hate group.

I’m sorry that it hurts your feelings that the Southern Poverty Law Center accurately describes your group, the Family Research Council, as promoting an anti-gay ideology. But complaining about that makes you look exactly like a KKK grand dragon complaining about being accused of racism. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so cruelly ironic in this particular instance. Because you see, what you’re doing is claiming that in labeling the FRC a hate group, the SPLC is somehow responsible for the shooting of the building manager at that group’s headquarters. And yet I don’t see you taking the slightest hint of responsibility for every instance of gay bashing that occurs– the murder, torture, and imprisonment of men, women, and children for simply being perceived as homosexual.

It actually says a lot about your twisted mentality if you think that describing the FRC as a hate goup– even if it wasn’t true– legitimizes shooting someone associated with it. If it did, we would see members of the SPLC out attacking members of the FRC, wouldn’t we? Instead of writing online and in newsletters about how the FRC relies on pseudoscience to legitimize its claims that homosexuality is a threat to society and characterize homosexuals as immoral in order to hamper their efforts to gain equality, members of and sympathizers with the SPLC would just be waging a literal war on you! But they’re not. And no, this one guy does not count.

People who aren’t doing anything wrong– people who are actually doing important, necessary, brave things– are occasionally shot. George Tiller was one of those people. Members of your group are not, and pointing this out does not amount to justifying shooting them. See, I understand a general reluctance to say that people who speak out against something are giving “license” to people who take it upon themselves to go out and physically attack practitioners of that thing. I get it– we don’t want to equate condemnation, even strenuous condemnation, with violence. But here’s the funny thing– you are expressing no such reluctance! You are claiming that condemnation amounts to license to harm– I took that word directly from you– and yet you don’t hold yourself and your own group responsible for attacks against any homosexual! You know, the people who have actually campaigned for such people to be attacked!

How can this be? Are you an idiot as well as a bigot?

Of course not. You’re a bigot who is also a transparent hypocrite. This has always been the case– your name is right up there with Brian Fischer in terms of people I don’t even bother to read about anymore when I come across a headline. It’s always a story about something said in which the hate and the hypocrisy compete for dominance. But now you’re in the spotlight because someone unfortunate enough to work for you received the focused rage of an unstable person against your odious organization, and some people might be in danger of taking you seriously. Which is why I’m writing this post.

I’ve always liked that (apparently disputed) Gandhi quote, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” But it’s a problematic thing to say, because you can count on anyone who is being ignored, laughed at, or fought using it to understand that eventually they will win. This is the slogan of authentic victims of oppression, but also of oppressors with a martyr complex because they do not realize they’re oppressors. When you’re lying about a group of people in order to make them seem dangerous or immoral when in fact they’re nothing of the sort, and advocating that their behavior (which you’re lying about) should be criminalized– guess what? That’s a good way of knowing which group you fall into! You can’t be ignored, because you have power. You can be laughed at, but only because it beats crying or screaming. You can be fought, but this lone shooter is the only one trying to do so with force– and I bet you’re over the moon about that.

I wonder how Leo Johnson feels to know that you’re capitalizing on his attack in order to claim glorious underdog status, probably regretting only the fact that he wasn’t killed. I have not the slightest doubt that you would welcome more such attacks, in order to double down on the irony of a group which promotes violence against gays instituted by government shrieking about violence perpetuated against them by vigilantes. It must leave a perversely sweet taste in your mouth to preach hate against a group for nine years and then denounce them and their supporters when someone on your side is attacked. Poor, poor, persecuted bigots. The world is so unfair. When George Rekers got caught with a male prostitute, that was a tragedy (because he got caught). But this– this is an opportunity! An opportunity to do what you do best– paint yourself as the real victim in a battle against those evil people who think there’s nothing wrong with being gay. That’s getting harder and harder as the obviousness of this position becomes ever more prevalent, but for now, at least a bone has been thrown– a juicy, beefy bone of martyr complex opportunity, and you’ve leaped on it with jowls a’drooling.

Enjoy, I suppose. At least allow Johnson a sliver or too– he earned it– and cherish it while it lasts. You’re a dying breed, but not because someone’s going to come and shoot you. Because hateful crazies like you don’t come into power very often, and once they lose that power society is reluctant to give it back again.

ETA: The Southern Poverty Law Center published a statement on Perkins’ remarks. Excerpt:

Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC’s criticisms of the FRC and the FRC’s criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse — claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

Religion is and isn’t special

Religion is and isn’t special published on 1 Comment on Religion is and isn’t special
Passerotti, God the Father

The primary reason, it seems, that people are now telling Dan Savage that he shouldn’t have apologized– even in as qualified and precise terms as he did– is because it gives the impression that one should not criticize religious beliefs. And if one does so, and it offends, the appropriate thing to do is to relent and express sincere regret. The basic impression of someone who hasn’t dug into the details and/or prefers not to consider them is that Dan Savage insulted Christianity, Christian students were offended, and so Savage apologized to them. Examining the situation beyond that very superficial level reveals all three of these statements to be inaccurate, but people who are just fine with the idea of insulting religious beliefs are concerned to see Savage, ordinarily very much just fine with doing such himself, suddenly appear to acquiesce to those he disturbed. It looks like appeasement, like giving up legitimacy and rhetorical ground.

The “spell” referenced in the title of philosopher Dan Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell is not religion itself, but the protective aura of deference surrounding discussion of it. Dennett argues that if we aim to properly discuss the origins and effects of religion, we can’t be held back by barricades of etiquette which allow the description of religious beliefs and practices as true and/or moral, but not false and/or immoral. Further, we must reject the proposition that religion is a sui generis pursuit, noncontinuous with other kinds of human thought and behavior or even with other kinds of non-human animal thought and behavior. Does this mean saying religion is just like all other kinds of basic things humans– and even other animals– do? No, of course not. The fact that it has a name, constitutes a category, suggests that there are reasons for saying that some things people do, say, and believe are religious whereas others aren’t. However it’s also true that religious speech is a kind of human speech, religious behavior is a kind of human behavior, and religious beliefs are kinds of human beliefs. These are all things that humans conceive, live, and do with their human brains and their human bodies in their human societies and cultures. Studying the cognition of religion– the production and perpetuation of it in terms of how minds produce and perpetuate all other kinds of human activity– means starting with this recognition.

It sounds pretty basic and non-controversial, except when you consider that there are believers who are so certain of the one-of-a-kind, completely separate and special nature of their beliefs that they won’t even call them religion. Instead you get “I’m spiritual; not religious” or “Other people have religion; I have a personal relationship with Jesus.” To them, “religion” is the category of all of the failed, false, misguided attempts of humanity to reach the divine, whereas they have the real thing. To say otherwise is not only mistaken but offensive, precisely because this body of beliefs has been declared so very personal. You wouldn’t question out loud whether someone loves his mother, and for that same reason you shouldn’t question whether he loves his Lord– or how he knows he has a Lord in the first place. The problem is, of course, that loving someone is a highly subjective and emotional matter, whereas gods, spirits, ghosts, demons, souls, and any other entities which are supernatural but asserted to exist objectively are not. Whether God exists as creator of the universe and answerer of prayers, performer of miracles, and possible hater of gays is an objective proposition whose truth or falsity matters. The truth or falsity of the objective existence of all things matter, of course, but you’d think especially that of the supposed origin of life, the universe, and everything.

So claims of empirical truth that come from religion are just like all other empirical truth claims in terms of being subject to the same demands for evidence and justification. Atheists by definition are just people who don’t believe in any gods, but atheists who are also skeptics will point out that they disbelieve because they have searched for such evidence and justification and found them to be lacking. The case for God did not convince them. This is obviously not the entire story, however…atheists are not rational androids who simply  applied logic to the proposition that gods or the entirety of supernatural agents existing and then concluded that they don’t. Being human, atheists are subject to the same intuitions and biases that affect everyone else– and that’s where things get interesting.

See, there’s reason to believe that religion is intuitive….that we suspect and come to believe in the existence of “spiritual beings” because of ordinary features that come with being human. We are social animals, particularly keen to detect and discern the motivations of other creatures with agency. We anthropomorphize at the drop of a hat. We have an existential sense that makes questions like “What’s it all about, anyway? Why are we here?” seem not only sensical but important– especially in the face of crisis. We are incapable of knowing what it’s like to be dead, because there is no way to be conscious of complete non-consciousness (no, sleeping does not count), so accounts of life after death seem compelling and we speculate about what Grandma must be thinking and feeling or even doing right now, even though she passed on years ago. Participating in religious rituals makes other participants feel like family, even if they aren’t actually kin, and being willing to expend resources to do so presents a powerful signal to others of our commitment to the group. We tend to believe in a just universe— the idea that immoral acts must be punished and good ones rewarded, somehow in the fabric of existence if not through the justice systems humans have created. There is just all of this stuff that human brains are prone to do that makes belief in supernatural entities and moral codes likely, if by no means determined. And of course there’s the fact that each individual human born into the world doesn’t have to take on the responsibility of creating a religion from scratch– there is almost certainly one available for him or her, handed down from his or her parents virtually from birth.

Some recent research has indicated that more intuitive thinkers tend to be more likely to also believe in a personal god. An intuitive thinker is a person who tends to think with his or her “gut,” allowing feelings to guide conclusions about the rightness or wrongness or even truth or falsity of different propositions. Intuitive thinking is reflexive and quick, and– let’s be honest– how most of us think, most of the time. It’s not a bad thing; in fact without intuitions we would be utterly lost. We just don’t have the time to make all of the thousands of decisions we make in a day by taking a time out, sitting down, and pondering what to do while taking every possible factor into consideration, weighing the pros and cons, and making an inductively or deductively reasonable conclusion…which charitably but falsely assumes that that’s what we are inclined to do in the first place.

“The human mind is designed to reason adaptively, not truthfully or even necessarily rationally.“

It would be far too cut and dry to say that intuitive thinking is affective, feeling-based, whereas counter-intuitive thinking is…well, thinking-based, but let’s say that counter-intuitive thinking is more reflective. It’s slower and requires a little more effort. Well, a little effort, period, as opposed to simply allowing your first emotionally-laden conclusion to rule the day. It’s intuitive for a religious person to think about God as behaving more or less like a super-human— having amazing powers and knowledge, but still doing things like focusing on one thing at a time and using the most direct physical means to cause events. Having a gender, opinions, and emotions. That’s the “personal god” the most intuitive person is most likely to believe in. I like to say that religion is intuitive but theology is counter-intuitive– theology is where you will find descriptions of God as a genderless amorphous “ground of being” whose behavior (if you can call it that) is complex and ubiquitous. This god is ultimate, and by that I don’t mean “super awesome” but rather “distant and removed.” This is not a god who intervenes directly in human endeavors by means of causing either catastrophes or miracles in order to influence our behavior. That is a proximate, personal god, the kind of being Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell would describe as punishing liberals every time a natural disaster or terrorist attack occurs. This is the god Rick Perry ordered Texans to pray to for relief from drought and threats to property rights, and who he, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain all believe told them to run for president. The god George W. Bush says told him to go to war.

You can probably guess the dangers I see in making God that personal, that proximate. But thoughtful theists generally recoil from it. They recognize the problems in claiming that God subverts human choices (“free will”) to specially punish or reward politicians, the enemies of fundamentalists, or football teams, not to mention directly cause or inhibit natural events such as tornadoes, tsunamis, or the processes of natural selection. Evolution is not a threat to a person who doesn’t demand that God be proximate. The plaintiffs in Kitzmiller v. Dover were mostly Christian, a couple of them even Sunday school teachers, but nevertheless they were branded atheists for supporting the teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools unqualified by disclaimers questioning its validity. From the perspective of someone who believes in proximate, personal, In-Your-Face God, everyone who isn’t might as well be a nonbeliever. And nonbelievers are the enemy.

This is the type of person who views critique of his or her religion as bullying or blasphemy, who places matters of faith off limits to critical discussion while simultaneously holding that God intercedes directly in world events in a perceptible ways on a regular basis– that is, that God’s existence, nature, and behavior are easily empirical matters. This is the type of person who, while virtually ubiquitous, must not be allowed to dictate the rules of the conversation. If they are, the definition of “respect” becomes “behave as though my beliefs are true,” when in actual fact a) it is possible to maintain that a belief– any belief– is false respectfully, and b) respect can and often should be abandoned when considering beliefs that are ridiculous and/or obviously harmful. It’s not a choice between understanding these beliefs and openly forming opinions about their truth or falsity, how morally acceptable or objectionable they are– we can and should strive to do all of the above. With these as a simultaneous goal, it becomes easier to identify when being critical crosses over into being an asshole and when being empathetic and understanding crosses over into being a doormat.

Religion is special.
And it isn’t.

Bullshit

Bullshit published on 2 Comments on Bullshit

In today’s news, a group of high school students were offended and walked out of a talk because they were told that they are too moral to do things like stoning women for being non-virgins on their wedding night or owning slaves. The person giving this talk called them cowards for doing so. When word of this event reached certain sources afterward, they loudly condemned the speaker for being a bully. The speaker then apologized.

Yes, I’m serious.

What, you want more details? Fine…

The speaker was sex advice columnist and gay rights advocate Dan Savage. The talk he was giving was about bullying of LGBT students and causes of such. And what happened was….well, just watch the video:

It’s important to actually hear what was said and done, yes, but mostly so that you can recognize the correct interpretation of what happened rather than what is being reported, which is that Savage went on an “anti-Christian tirade.” No, he did not. Nor did he go on an anti-Christianity tirade, or even really an anti-bible tirade. He did not bully Christian students, he didn’t abuse anyone, and– let’s note– he didn’t offend most of the Christian students in the room, at least not enough to make them walk out. I don’t find it likely that the loud cheers and applause when Savage dryly remarked “It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back” came from a group made up of all atheists, Muslims, and Jews. I think it included at least a few Christians who recognized how absurd it is to be offended at the suggestion that the Bible includes descriptions of and outright commands to do some silly or even horrible things, and modern Christians are content to leave such things to history rather than interpret them as rules for living today. And that if Christians can do that with stoning and slavery, they can do it with attacking homosexuals.

Because that’s what Savage said. Only he chose to describe those silly and/or horrible things as “bullshit,” which apparently was a bridge too far. Or at least I hope that’s what got so many outraged posteriors out of uncomfortable-looking conference hall seating. I hope it wasn’t a belief that it’s actually really unfortunate that we can’t stone fornicating women to death anymore, because such is God’s true and enduring will.

I realize that language was the primary concern that caused the movie Bully to ironically be rated as appropriate only for ears older than those of the victims depicted in the documentary. But really, no high school student hasn’t heard the word “bullshit” countless times. As the title of a popular long-running show on Showtime, it barely rates as profanity. But was it an inaccurate word for what Savage was describing? In his apology, he says

On other occasions I’ve made the same point without using the word bullshit…

We can learn to ignore what the bible says about gay people the same way we have learned to ignore what the Bible says about clams and figs and farming and personal grooming and menstruation and masturbation and divorce and virginity and adultery and slavery. Let’s take slavery. We ignore what the Bible says about slavery in both the Old and New Testaments. And the authors of the Bible didn’t just fail to condemn slavery. They endorsed slavery: “Slaves obey your masters.” In his book Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that the Bible got the easiest moral question humanity has ever faced wrong. The Bible got slavery wrong. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? I’d put those odds at about 100%. 

It shouldn’t be hard for modern Christians to ignore what the bible says about gay people because modern Christians—be they conservative fundamentalists or liberal progressives—already ignore most of what the Bible says about sex and relationships. Divorce is condemned in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus Christ condemned divorce. Yet divorce is legal and there is no movement to amend state constitutions to ban divorce. Deuteronomy says that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death. Callista Gingrich lives. And there is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone the third Mrs. Gingrich to death.

…and maybe I shouldn’t have used the word bullshit in this instance. But while it may have been a regrettable word choice, my larger point stands: If believers can ignore what the Bible says about slavery, they can ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality. (The Bible also says some beautiful things that are widely ignored: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor… and come, follow me.” You better get right on that, Joel.) Finally, here’s Mark Twain on the Bible:

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. 

 I’m not guilty of saying anything that hasn’t been said before and—yes—said much better. What is “bullshit” in this context but “upwards of a thousand lies” in modern American English? 

That part, at least, doesn’t sound very apologetic. What Savage was actually apologizing for is calling the students who walked out “pansy-assed,” which sounds like a pretty good description to me for rising up from one’s chair and walking out almost the moment a speaker even mentions your holy text in a discussion on atrocities that once were seen as acceptable but are now easily recognizable as abhorrent. That is what happened, and I’ve seen claims in a few places that the walkout was planned in advance, before Savage even hit the stage.

Hemant Meta’s discussion of this says that Savage should not have used the words “bullshit” and “pansy-assed” because they are alienating. Perhaps they are, but that isn’t necessarily an argument against using them. For one thing, the students Savage called “pansy-assed” were already feeling good and alienated. And I thought it pretty clever to use one of the predominate epithets hurled against gay men for the past few decades to describe a walkout in response to the suggestion that the bible is a source of bigotry and bullying. It’s not the source, however, as Meta surprisingly claims:

So did he go too far in talking about the Bible? Nope. If you’re a journalist covering this subject, you should know about the root cause of anti-gay bigotry: The Bible. I don’t know how anyone could give a speech like this without talking about religion.

“The Bible” ! = “religion.” It wouldn’t even be accurate to say that religion is the root cause of anti-gay bigotry, but it would be a lot closer. Many religions contain moral codes in which some notion of sexual purity and prescribed gender roles are important and therefore men who “act like women” and women who “act like men” by sleeping with members of the same sex are regarded as unnatural and profane. Ultimately, however, mistrust of any and all people who step outside of rigid gender roles is so widespread that I believe it precedes and is imported into religion by people who want to believe God not only shares but is the source of their bigotry. Indeed, you can’t– or at least, shouldn’t– give a talk addressing bullying and general mistreatment of gays without addressing how religion contributes to it. But that doesn’t mean holding all religious people solely accountable for homophobia, which Savage took great pains not to do. That was the point of noting that there are all sorts of things good religious people no longer believe or practice even if old doctrines say they should, because they (the people) are good. People who have been taught that God considers homosexuality sinful change their position on this all of the time, usually because they are actually exposed to the existence of homosexuals who are decent, kind, normal people who aren’t harming anyone.  “Therefore,” the non-homophobic religious person concludes, “I must have been given bad information about what God thinks is sinful in this regard. Surely in order to be considered sinful something must be harmful to someone, and homosexuality isn’t.”

The existence of this sort of person must be acknowledged and respected, and my hunch is that Dan Savage’s audience was largely composed of them. Those are the people who laughed when he said “The bible guys in the hall can come back now because I’m done beating up the bible,” because they knew he wasn’t really beating up the bible. And he sure as hell wasn’t beating up Christianity or Christians. He was beating up the notion that it’s acceptable to hypocritically discard other relics of religious hatred from 2,000 years ago because they don’t apply to how we should live today, but not when it comes to beating on the gays. And that’s a message for which nobody should apologize.

The “what you did” vs. “who you are” distinction matters

The “what you did” vs. “who you are” distinction matters published on No Comments on The “what you did” vs. “who you are” distinction matters

So Rush Limbaugh’s brother David is sticking up for him and complaining that people aren’t accepting Rush’s sincere (yes, that’s how David characterizes it) apology for being a bigoted lout. The apology in which, I would note, Rush further insults those whose pardon he ostensibly seeks by suggesting that his poor behavior amounts to sinking down to their level. The refusal to accept this apology as authentic and satisfactory by liberals, David says, amounts to rank hypocrisy. You can probably guess the basis for that complaint before I even quote him:

What I am observing is the most radical display of hate and intolerance that I’ve witnessed in years. It does not surprise me, but it is ironic that the very people who masquerade as exemplars of tolerance, civility and compassion have no room in their hearts for forgiveness.

The immediate response to this, of course is– radical display of hate and intolerance? Are you talking about your brother’s behavior? No, he is not. He is honestly saying that hateful and intolerant liberals are refusing to accept Rush Limbaugh’s apology because they “want his scalp,” and this is ironic given how much liberals like to talk about tolerance and compassion and stuff.

I would like to meet the liberal– the anyone– who defines tolerance and compassion as being nice to people who act like bigoted assholes for twenty years and then offer a backhanded apology for it once their sponsors start to pull out. No, when liberals advocate for tolerance and compassion, what they’re advocating is for people to stop being vocally bigoted, especially to stop legislating their bigotry. You can be a bigot, but behind closed doors please. Stop pretending that the sight of a gay couple holding hands somehow damages your psyche and grow up. There are still Americans who haven’t yet grown up and accepted the sight of an interracial couple holding hands, but we’re making progress. Tolerance is recognizing that what people are, if they’re consenting adults and aren’t harming anyone, is not your business. Compassion, in this context, means not foisting your private moral disapproval on them by attempting to outlaw what they are, or at least the expression of what they are. Acceptance would be not disapproving in the first place, but people don’t have a lot of control over what they accept. Acceptance is a feeling, and it’s unfair to try and dictate peoples’ feelings.  They can certainly, however, change their behavior.

Back to Rush Limbaugh. People are condemning him because of what he did, which was express bigotry against someone for who she is. Some people are taking the low road and making fun of his weight, yes, but the slams against him are not in general about immutable or semi-immutable traits. When you attack who someone is, you are by extension attacking everyone who shares the relevant trait in common. In calling Sandra Fluke a slut for wanting birth control, Rush called every woman who wants birth control a slut. And “every woman who wants birth control,” in the U.S., is nearly all of us. Birth control is fundamental to womens’ freedom and autonomy. In order to lead successful and independent lives, we need to be able to be sexually active without getting pregnant. That is why the war on birth control is being characterized as a war on women. In supporting it, especially by deeming it appropriate to insult and impugn the moral character of every woman who has used birth control, Rush attacked women for who they are. That is intolerant.

Refusing to be nice to individual people who have behaved abominably, especially intolerantly, is not intolerant. Tolerance has never been about being nice to individuals; it has been about respecting the autonomy and interests of groups. Every time a conservative attempts to conflate these two by whining about those liberals being so hypocritical by being mean to a bigot, a dittohead gets his wings.

What should the bus driver call you?

What should the bus driver call you? published on 3 Comments on What should the bus driver call you?
How would you feel if this man called you “babe”?

Here’s a sticky one…or maybe not so sticky. Jo Walters writes in the Guardian about her experience of being called “babe” by a bus driver, and then her experience of how she has been viewed and treated following making a complaint about that:

In the past week I’ve been to the cinema twice (The Artist, and The Descendants – both fairly good), stocked up my fridge (meatballs and pizza on the menu this week) and arranged to catch up with friends. Oh and I’ve been called “an irate woman”, “a daft woman”, a “silly, silly woman” told I “must look like the old back of a bus”, to “Get a life!” and that “I need an operation, to remove the chip from [my] shoulder” – all by people I don’t know and have never met. What is my crime? Just politely contacting my local bus company to let them know that I don’t like it when their bus drivers use terms such as “love”, “darling” and “babe”. I pointed out that I generally find their drivers friendly and courteous but that when some of them use that language I find it demeaning. I wasn’t angry, I didn’t ask to make a formal complaint, I wasn’t trying to get anyone into trouble, I’m not trying to get anyone fired, I didn’t threaten legal action – I just thought they might like to know how the actions of some of their staff made me feel. I received a prompt and friendly response agreeing that it wasn’t really appropriate language and not something the company would condone. They promised to let drivers know that this sort of language isn’t appreciated and I didn’t really think much more of it until my local radio station, Brighton’s Juice 107.2 mentioned on Facebook that drivers had been asked not to call people babe. From there I spotted it in our local newspaper, the Metro, the Mail Online, found it was discussed on Loose Women and various local radio stations. The thing I find weird is that I don’t really think this is news; I just sent some feedback to a company. It seems that people find the idea that language can affect others a bizarre concept and that it is “just political correctness gone mad” (that gem came up a few times). Much of the coverage and comments paints me as some angry woman who should be grateful for the apparent compliment. I didn’t make it a gender issue; the coverage and comments did.
The thing is though, I personally find terms like “babe” coming from men to be overfamiliar, sexist and patronising. I’m allowed to interpret their words in that way, it doesn’t make me irrational or oversensitive. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a sense of humour or that I should be grateful for the attention. It is interesting to note that lots of the critical comments are from men.

I don’t think it’s that people find the idea that language affects others bizarre– it’s more likely that they either fail to understand the concept of benevolent sexism, fail to recognize benevolent sexism when they see it, or simply don’t agree that this counts. Why would anyone but a cold, angry, PC-obsessed woman fail to see being called ________ (“babe,” in this case) as flattering, or at least benign? What kind of person is offended by a compliment or a nicety?

Context matters, naturally. In this case the entire discussion is about context, but it’s important to point out a cultural difference specifically. I think most Americans would see it as a no-brainer that public servants– or indeed, anyone who works in customer service– should not call patrons/customers “babe,” but in the UK it’s not just kind old ladies in department stores who will refer to you in diminutives; it’s everybody. I didn’t mind hearing “Ta, love” from a ticket-taker on the train, and in fact found it nice, because I knew it’s something practically every ticket-taker says to practically everyone. It would make me sad if “Ta, love” went away, even though I no longer ride trains in the UK. So in that regard I can understand people being miffed about a crackdown on the kind of language bus drivers are allowed to use, except that “babe” seems to me to be fundamentally different (in England) from “love.” Here in the states, hearing either one from a male bus driver would probably seem equally inappropriate.

A male bus driver? Yes, because of course it’s a gender issue. Being called “honey” or “dear” by the old lady at the department store is a different beast from being called the exact same by a man in the same place, much less for example the DMV (the former being far more elective than the latter). The division between between a nicety and an inappropriate remark depends on who it’s coming from as well as where you are. And everyone seems to treat the matter of where that division lies the way Oliver Wendell Holmes famously described identifying pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Or in this case, hear it. One commenter on the Guardian article wrote:

I like it when I get called ‘bach’ which means little but is used like ‘pet’, by Welsh speakers in my local shops.
Feels like an endearment.
The writer should keep her outrage for the important issues.
If a bus driver calls you a ‘ho’ then complain by all means, but babe is used in a positive way by many people, girls call other girls babe all the time.
Using words like love, bach, pet, dear all help oil the wheels of social intercourse.
Rebuffing something said with good heart is just downright rude.

I didn’t see anything in Walters’ piece that sounded like “outrage,” but it’s not surprising to see her comments portrayed as such. Along with the sexism-specific trope of “You should find it flattering,” I wouldn’t be surprised if the term “outrage” was used more often to portray complaints of offense as irrational and hysterical (yes, that word used intentionally) than to describe actual reactions to wanton cruelty or gross violations of decency. When reacting to a complaint by someone that something is offensive which you find innocuous, it seems that the immediate response is to magnify the offense far beyond what was originally stated. I’m guilty of doing this myself all of the time, and it’s a hard urge to control. Why am I not doing it now? Because I don’t see a complaint about being called “babe” as a threat. I see the complaint as legitimate, but even if I didn’t it wouldn’t threaten my self-image to learn that in this case, someone finds something unacceptable that I don’t. Re-examining my assumptions, or examining them for the first time, wouldn’t be painful. Being intellectually humble is comparatively easy. It’s harder to be humble that way when you, or people you agree with and/or care about, are the source of the offense.

Notice I haven’t said that offense can’t simply be illegitimate. I certainly think it can, but would point out that our conclusions about such tend to be shaped by the effect the conclusion holds for our self-images. Ethical dissenters— and by that I mean, people who disagree with the majority for ethical reasons– are a living, breathing, practicing condemnation of what most people regard as normal or at least uncontroversial, and many find that disturbing. Understandably so, but the problem comes when the next step is to misrepresent the dissenters in order to deflect their grievance. This can be counted on to happen regardless of whether said grievance is legitimate or not. Simply speaking up about it is enough to set the wheels in motion.

A few other tropes from the comments:

Let me give you a tip. You always have a choice to take offence or not to take offence.
I strive never to take offence unless I’m absolutely certain that offence is intended. 

AKA “Your offense is your own fault” coupled with “Your offense isn’t legitimate unless I’m offended too.” The feeling of offense absolutely is not a choice, but the expression of offense is, which the commenter conflates here. He/she has it precisely backwards in suggesting that one shouldn’t express offense if none is intended, because people who have been offensive inadvertently are the only ones who would care and want to change their behavior. People who have offended on purpose will be at best unaffected, and at worst gratified by the news that their arrows have hit their mark.

Spot on!
I can see that despite the friendly intentions behind it, the language is totally and utterly degrading.
Oh hang on a second… I can’t
You must be so much fun to be around!

AKA “Can’t you take a joke?” coupled with another “Intent is all that matters.” Certainly intention matters, but again– that’s why we kindly explain to Grandma that it’s not the best idea to use the word “negro” anymore, and to Junior that calling his gaming pals “fags” when he bests them in a game isn’t cool.

are you seriously expecting generations of people to re think how they speak?

Yes, she is. This is the essence of political correctness; any word that someone, somewhere might find offensive must be eliminated, however harmlessly it was meant.
It’s all covered by that maddening word “inappropriate”. Inappropriate to whom? Also “unacceptable”. Unacceptable to whom?
Some self-righteous prude, that’s who.

Merriam-Webster defines a slur as “a: an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo, b: a shaming or degrading effect.” I like that this definition includes both intent and effect, and doesn’t require that they be coupled. And yes, the process of discovering that certain language has the effect of degrading, dismissing, shaming, or trivializing people– that is, it amounts to a slur– and asking that it not be used on that basis is expecting generations of people to rethink how they speak. That’s sort of the point. Congratulations first commenter, you have grasped it!

I’m going to make some assumptions about the second commenter, but would bet money that they’re true: 1) he’s male (okay, his name is “Howard,” but I promise I didn’t look at that first), 2) white, and 3) straight. The grand trifecta of potential for dedicated ignorance of privilege and griping about political correctness. Which, if I were less of a person, would make me wish that he will be referred to as “babe” by every hulking male bus driver to enter his life forevermore.

But I’m nicer than that.

ETA: Okay, stop dancing for a minute while I clarify: No, I was not saying that white, straight, men are the only people with unexamined privilege, the only people who complain about political correctness, and certainly not the only people who can be prejudiced. Prejudice is, ironically, an equal-opportunity pursuit. I’m saying that the people most ignorant about privilege tend to be the ones who have the most privilege, which means you guys sitting at the top of the privilege pyramid: straight, while, males. I’m actually least certain about race amongst those three traits, since we’ve seen ample evidence recently of sneering at political correctness by a certain straight black male.

By all means, please resume dancing now.